Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to the field of building energy management, and more specifically to an apparatus and method for efficient business name categorization.
Description of the Related Art
The problem with resources such as electrical power, water, fossil fuels, and their derivatives (e.g., natural gas) is that the generation and consumption of a resource both vary with respect to time. Furthermore, the delivery and transport infrastructure is limited in that it cannot instantaneously match generation levels to provide for consumption levels. The delivery and transport infrastructure is limited in supply and the demand for this limited supply is constantly fluctuating. As anyone who has participated in a rolling blackout will concur, the times are more and more frequent when resource consumers are forced to face the realities of limited resource supply.
Because of both popular and legislative pressures, the energy generation and distribution community has begun to take measures to manage their limited supplies of energy in the presence of diminishing management resources. This community, most prevalently seen in the case of electrical power, has begun to shift the burden of energy management (e.g., curtailment, load shifting, etc.) down to the consumer in the form of peak demand charges, time of use charges, etc. But management of peak energy use, time of energy use, load shifting, etc. is a very complex task for a utility, let alone for a consumer. At the residential level, energy management is less cumbersome, but this function becomes much more complex when dealing with business consumers that employ energy demanding devices (e.g., lighting systems, large ovens, industrial refrigeration, and hundreds to thousands of lights, to name a few) and that have defined hours of operation.
For example, consider a factory owner whose building includes 20 air conditioners, each consuming 10 kW when turned on. If they are all on at the same time, then the peak demand for that period is 200 kW. Not only does the energy supplier have to provide for instantaneous generation of this power in conjunction with loads exhibited by its other consumers, but the distribution network that supplies this peak power must be sized such that it delivers 200 kW. And in most cases, the factory owner will incur a peak demand surcharge to offset the costs of peak energy generation and distribution.
Though responsibility of energy management has shifted to the consumer, the actualization of management remains shared between the utility and the consumer, often times through third parties. These third parties and under contract to the utility to facilitate energy management by the utility's customers, and the third parties profit from sharing in the cost savings that they are able to achieve with the utility's customers.
Various mechanisms exist today for perfecting energy management which include demand reduction programs, energy efficiency programs, online solicitations, text messaging, and direct mail. Many of these mechanisms employ on-site special monitoring and control equipment provided by the third parties, which is coupled to network operations centers (NOCs) staffed by the third parties. In conjunction with requirements provided by the utilities, the NOCs issued commands and directives over any number of communication channels that cause—directly or indirectly—these consumers to reduce consumption, load shift, perform upgrades to more energy efficient devices, and etc., thereby satisfying the mandated energy management requirements. Generally speaking, when a consumer is as closely coupled to a third party NOC so as to have on-site monitoring and control equipment, much is known about that consumer's type of business, internal equipment configuration, and other data that allows for commands and directives issued over the communication channels to be very effective at managing energy use. This is generally the case, but not always the case.
On the other extreme, a vast majority of a utility's consumers are only loosely coupled to a NOC. For this class of consumer, the NOC may only business names. In some cases, a utility may provide business type data obtain from a source such as Dunn & Bradstreet, but more often than not only the business names are known.
This disclosure deals with the problem of selecting effective and efficient control and monitoring message to be issued to a consumer having an unknown business type, or a business type that is obtained but questionable. For example, a message to that energy savings can be had by shifting heavy equipment operation hours to early in the morning is affective for “Bull's Body Shop,” as long as Bull's Body Shop is indeed an automotive repair facility. But if this business were an exotic dance club or tattoo parlor, such a message about heaving equipment usage would be remarkably ineffective.
Therefore, what is needed is an apparatus and method for efficiently categorizing businesses based on their name alone.
What is also needed is a mechanism for managing energy usage for businesses whose business types are not known, where the mechanism does not require extraordinary computing resources (e.g., memory, throughput).
What is further needed is an automated technique for determining business categories associated with a substantial number of utility consumers that is memory and processing efficient.